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brain stimulation

BrainHealth Week starts today! Plus: dancing, personalized mental health, brain stimulation and more

February 20, 2023 by SharpBrains

Wel­come to a new edi­tion of Sharp­Brains e‑newsletter, annouc­ing the kick-off of Brain­Health Week and fea­tur­ing some stim­u­lat­ing resources and teasers.

#1. Brain­Health Week (Feb­ru­ary 20–24th) starts today:

Explore many fun events includ­ing a dai­ly text chal­lenge, a talk with the always great Dr. Tom Insel, and more!

#2. With­out Brain Health, you do not have Health

Impor­tant arti­cle giv­en that “It typ­i­cal­ly takes twen­ty to forty years or more for sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies to mean­ing­ful­ly ben­e­fit human life. We can­not wait that long.” — Wise words!

#3. Sin Salud Cere­bral, Ust­ed no tiene Salud –same arti­cle, in Span­ish, for extra men­tal stim­u­la­tion and for sharing 🙂

“En los últi­mos diez años, los neu­ro­ci­en­tifi­cos hemos des­cu­bier­to mucho acer­ca de cómo fun­ciona el cere­bro, cómo mejo­rar la salud y el fun­cionamien­to del cere­bro y la mente a lo largo de la vida, y cómo esto con­tribuye a nues­tra salud y bien­es­tar en gen­er­al. Únase a nosotros y asegúrese de que los mejores años de su cere­bro están aún por venir, recor­dan­do que: Sin salud cere­bral, ust­ed no tiene salud.”

#4. Ball­room danc­ing can reduce aging-relat­ed brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus (and, more than tread­mill walking!)

“(Danc­ing) gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater improve­ments than tread­mill walk­ing on one mea­sure of exec­u­tive func­tion and on pro­cess­ing speed, which is the time it takes to respond to or process infor­ma­tion. Com­pared with walk­ing, danc­ing was also asso­ci­at­ed with reduced brain atro­phy in the hip­pocam­pus – a brain region that is key to mem­o­ry func­tion­ing and is par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ed by Alzheimer’s dis­ease … We think that social danc­ing may be more ben­e­fi­cial than walk­ing because it is phys­i­cal­ly, social­ly and cog­ni­tive­ly demand­ing – and there­fore strength­ens a wide net­work of brain regions.”

#5. Alto Neu­ro­science rais­es $60M (equi­ty + cred­it) to help fix the “tri­al and error” approach to psy­chi­atric medication

“To do so, Alto is pair­ing a trove of data on EEG activ­i­ty, genet­ics, behav­ioral task mea­sure­ments and oth­er fac­tors to see which of its drugs fits best with patients who have depres­sion, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and oth­er men­tal health con­di­tions. The company’s arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence plat­form homes in on three buck­ets: cog­ni­tion, emo­tion and sleep.”

#6. Voice bio­mark­er plat­form Sonde Health rais­es $19.25M to spread access to men­tal health mon­i­tor­ing and beyond

“GN Group will inte­grate Sonde’s Men­tal Fit­ness vocal bio­mark­er into its hear­ing prod­ucts. The com­pa­ny is already work­ing with Sonde to devel­op an MCI vocal bio­mark­er. Qual­comm, which has already inte­grat­ed Sonde’s vocal bio­mark­ers into its mobile device chipsets, has extend­ed the rela­tion­ship to include its wear­able chipsets.”

#7. The Euro­pean Soci­ety for Brain Stim­u­la­tion oppos­es EU reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of TMS and tDCS, claim­ing a flawed safe­ty assessment

“To put this into per­spec­tive, the like­li­hood of a seizure from rTMS (0.003%) is low­er than that asso­ci­at­ed with the use of anti­de­pres­sants and antipsy­chotics (0.1–1, 5%) … More­over, when such seizures occur they do so most­ly out­side the clinician’s office, by con­trast with rTMS (Per­era et al., 2016). For low inten­si­ty tDCS, tACS, tRNS seizure risk is com­plete­ly absent … As an organ­i­sa­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of NIBS clin­i­cians and pro­fes­sion­als from across Europe, we, the ESBS, there­fore dis­agree with this EU deci­sion and in par­tic­u­lar with the fac­tu­al­ly incor­rect jus­ti­fi­ca­tions of that deci­sion to reclas­si­fy TMS and TES as inva­sive technologies”

Final­ly, a cou­ple of brain teasers to help you test your men­tal rota­tion cog­ni­tive skills:

#8. Can you read a map?

#9. Brain teas­er to stim­u­late your men­tal imagery, spa­tial rota­tion … and appetite

Have a great Brain­Health Week!

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Alto Neuroscience, Alzheimer’s Disease, brain stimulation, Brain Teasers, brain-teaser, BrainHealth Week, cerebral, cognitive-skills, dancing, mental health, mental-fitness, personalized, salud, salud cerebral, Sonde, tDCS, TMS, vocal biomarker

The European Society for Brain Stimulation opposes EU reclassification of TMS and tDCS, claiming a flawed safety assessment

January 24, 2023 by SharpBrains

Man­i­festo: Oppo­si­tion to EU Reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of TMS and tDCS equip­ment to Class III devices based on flawed evi­dence (Euro­pean Soci­ety for Brain Stimulation):

It has recent­ly come to our atten­tion that the EU has reclas­si­fied the NIBS equip­ments includ­ing rTMS and tDCS, as Class III devices, the cat­e­go­ry of high­est risk, sim­i­lar to inva­sive treat­ments, such as deep-brain stim­u­la­tion implants. This reclas­si­fi­ca­tion has a major impact on our field, not only for man­u­fac­tur­ers, but also for researchers, clin­i­cians and patients and we judge this reclas­si­fi­ca­tion a mis­take. First, the evi­den­tial basis for this change is a flawed assess­ment of the safe­ty lit­er­a­ture. Sec­ond, the con­sul­ta­tion process has occurred with­out input from spe­cial­ists or stake­hold­ers pro­fes­sion­al­ly active in the field of NIBS. Nei­ther the ESBS nor Nation­al Soci­eties of Brain Stim­u­la­tion nor indi­vid­ual experts with­in the Euro­pean NIBS com­mu­ni­ty were con­sult­ed on this change. [Read more…] about The Euro­pean Soci­ety for Brain Stim­u­la­tion oppos­es EU reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of TMS and tDCS, claim­ing a flawed safe­ty assessment

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: brain stimulation, EU, European Society for Brain Stimulation, neurostimulation, rTMS, tDCS

Combined tDCS neurostimulation and cognitive training found to improve working memory among older adults–especially those with lower starting capacity

October 25, 2022 by SharpBrains

Giv­ing mem­o­ry a lift: Can games and brain stim­u­la­tion do it? (Med­ical­New­sTo­day):

A person’s work­ing mem­o­ry may decline with age or if they have demen­tia, Parkinson’s dis­ease, or have had a stroke. When this occurs, the loss can affect their day-to-day qual­i­ty of life, turn­ing even sim­ple tasks into often-demor­al­iz­ing chal­lenges. [Read more…] about Com­bined tDCS neu­rostim­u­la­tion and cog­ni­tive train­ing found to improve work­ing mem­o­ry among old­er adults–especially those with low­er start­ing capacity

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: aging, brain stimulation, Brain-Plasticity, COGNISANT, cognitive needs, cognitive-functioning, cognitive-skills, Cognitive-Training, dementia, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, neuroplasticity, Parkinsons-disease, prefrontal-cortex, strengthen working memory, tDCS, Transcranial-direct-current-stimulation, Working-memory, working-memory-training

Study: Personalized, closed-loop neuromodulation can (one day) become a “pacemaker for the brain”

October 5, 2021 by SharpBrains

Click image above to watch 2‑minute video explain­ing the study

Treat­ing Severe Depres­sion with On-Demand Brain Stim­u­la­tion (UCSF press release):

UCSF Health physi­cians have suc­cess­ful­ly treat­ed a patient with severe depres­sion by tap­ping into the spe­cif­ic brain cir­cuit involved in depres­sive brain pat­terns and reset­ting them using the equiv­a­lent of a pace­mak­er for the brain.

“This study points the way to a new par­a­digm that is des­per­ate­ly need­ed in psy­chi­a­try,” said Andrew Krys­tal, PhD, pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try and mem­ber of the UCSF Weill Insti­tute for Neu­ro­sciences. “We’ve devel­oped a pre­ci­sion-med­i­cine approach that has suc­cess­ful­ly man­aged our patient’s treat­ment-resis­tant depres­sion by iden­ti­fy­ing and mod­u­lat­ing the cir­cuit in her brain that’s unique­ly asso­ci­at­ed with her symp­toms.” [Read more…] about Study: Per­son­al­ized, closed-loop neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion can (one day) become a “pace­mak­er for the brain”

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: biomarker, brain circuit, brain patterns, brain stimulation, closed-loop therapy, deep-brain-stimulation, neural biomarker, neuromodulation, neuropsychiatric, pacemaker for the brain, precision medicine, psychiatry, severe depression, treat depression, treatment-resistant depression

Neuromodulation developer Halo Neuroscience closes its doors; Flow Neuroscience acquires assets

February 19, 2021 by SharpBrains

Flow acquires brain stim­u­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­er Halo (Med­ical Device Network):

Flow Neu­ro­science has acquired the assets of brain stim­u­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­er Halo Neu­ro­science to advance its research into depres­sion and oth­er men­tal health dis­or­der treat­ments. [Read more…] about Neu­ro­mod­u­la­tion devel­op­er Halo Neu­ro­science clos­es its doors; Flow Neu­ro­science acquires assets

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Peak Performance, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: brain stimulation, depression, Flow Neuroscience, Halo Neuroscience, headset, neuromodulation, neuroscience, tDCS, Transcranial-direct-current-stimulation

Air Force announces research platform to harness closed-loop neurotechnology and accelerate learning “on the fly”

August 18, 2020 by SharpBrains

U.S. Air Force illustration/Richard Eldridge

Air Force Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Part­ner­ship Aims to Accel­er­ate Learn­ing (Mil­i­tary Spot):

The Indi­vid­u­al­ized Neur­al Learn­ing Sys­tem, or iNeu­raLS, is a new aug­ment­ed learn­ing plat­form that will enable rapid learn­ing by closed-loop mod­u­la­tion of cog­ni­tive states dur­ing skill acqui­si­tion. Essen­tial­ly, the AFRL team seeks to devel­op a capa­bil­i­ty that will give Air­men the abil­i­ty to rapid­ly acquire knowl­edge and skills on the fly through direct brain inter­faces with the help of neurotechnologies…

[Read more…] about Air Force announces research plat­form to har­ness closed-loop neu­rotech­nol­o­gy and accel­er­ate learn­ing “on the fly”

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Filed Under: Peak Performance, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: Air-Force, Airmen, augmented learning, brain interfaces, brain stimulation, brain-machine interface, cognitive states, electroencephalography, Individualized Neural Learning System, iNeuraLS, Learning, magnetoencephalography, neural signals, neuromodulation, neurotech, neurotechnologies, Neurotechnology, noninvasive neurotechnologies, skill acquisition

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